Christmas in Gotham City
by Grigiocuore
Summary: Batman and Joker, the Christmas night and the sick lights of Gotham; because even for a jester of shadows this evening brings memories and shivers. But the snow can also bring the invincible hope of a dark knight. Pre-slash, but it depends on you. Merry Christmas


_Hello everyone! I love those two, and so I worked hard to write something for Christmas: I'm Italian, so my English isn't perfect, but I hope that you'll like it. I'm preparing a series of little tales about Batman and Joker, and the development of their link, that for me is full of possibilities; let me know if you would appreciate a glimpse of it. Pre-slash, but only if you want. Merry Christmas!_

**Christmas in Gotham City**

In Gotham, Christmas smells of tired lights and burned sugar.

The snow falls soundless, down in the dark, in the acid tangle of the street lamps and the alleys. Down in his kingdom of disharmonies and toxic lives.

You' re observing it, up on the ledge of the palace, fingers holding tight a card with a grin threadbare by time and touch. Funny, how those white blossoms, the very symbol of the purity that clears up and then dies, rest with so much sweetness on the window sills of the center flats and on the sewers of the suburbs, on a little girl's fair hair and on a heroin addicted's unrolled innards. But after all, it's what the nature is: the atrocious innocence of a mindless loop, that vomits his children in the world and strangles them just to pledge itself another turn of the weel of time.

_Just for another dance._

You screamed for many nights, towards that power: toward the forces that had torn off all your dreams and burnt your heart in the acid. Only after some time you had understood how majestic they were, how exciting was that joint of pure fortuities, far from every meaning, every judgment, every abyss of guilt or grace; and it was an electrifying vertigo to realize that instead of be one of the many wracks of this city, you could exist with the fierce freedom of the nature. Forgetting right and wrong and hope, and discovering finally, when he had ceased to search it, the greedy heart in the exact center of universe.

But when the snow comes, the ghosts return as well: you see them in the silly laughs of two kids playing snowball fight, in the chatting of a couple hugged against the frost, in the golden light of a door open for an instant. Ghosts of distant years, of scent of fir and glow of glazed balls, of gingerbread cookies crunched under a blanket with a gently smiling woman. And for a moment, only a moment, you ask yourself which taste has a glee not soiled with blood, and the dull illusion of a magic night.

_As if a candle would make dissapear the monsters in the dark. Especially if those monsters are you._

You hurl a laugh, piercing and unpleasing and cackling. Laughing is the best way to banish the silence of death, and that silence had grasped you from the day you dragged yourself out of the toxic vapors, the skin sizzling and changing.

It's then that you hear it: a breath of wind, a crackling of pressed concrete. After so much time, it's a nearly too simple track.

-Joker.-

The voice is deep and stern, the exact opposite of yours: few pondered words, like quicksilver drops.

You turns, the card still in your fingers. -Ah, Batsy. At work even tonight? Don't you flying creatures celebrate Christmas?-

-Not when one of the most dangerous criminals of the city has just escaped from Arkham. I can't let you go, not this time.-

-This time? Every time, bat. Chasing me must really be a compelling hobby.-

The man in black moves forward, and he seems a shadow mottled with white and winter. -You know well why I do it; don't fake it isn't true.-

You smile, but you know that today, especially today, you have waited for this encounter from the first instant you got out of the depths of the asylum; because when you pretend not to be a mortal any more the snow seeks revenge and burdens, and the only way not to freeze it's to find someone who still watch you as a man.

_And by now, I believe remain only you, Batsy._

So you attack as you always do: choking the truth in a laugh made of steel, transforming it in a joke that could never been true.

You let the card flowing through your fingers. -Sure I know why you do it: to dance, and to understand how to bring me back to your oh so loved mankind.-

The silence is black paper blazed by the Gotham streets. You rise your glaze, chemical light that kills the dark.

-Do you know that this duel will go forever on, don't you Bats?-.

The knight doesn't even blink his eyes, before that light. -And do you know that I will never stop trying, don't you?-

You observe him as you has observed the night, thinking that maybe that hero, the black promise of this rotten city, is the only hope which you haven't been able to break. And the relief, unexpected, is a warmth that doesn't hurt and melts the snow too. -Yes, I know.-

Then you laugh, and for a moment it seems almost a true laugh.


End file.
